1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates in general to the field of sales and marketing through information handling system and other contact media, and more particularly to a system and method for automated contact qualification for pursuing sales revenue.
2. Description of the Related Art
As the value and use of information continues to increase, individuals and businesses seek additional ways to process and store information. One option available to users is information handling systems. An information handling system generally processes, compiles, stores, and/or communicates information or data for business, personal, or other purposes thereby allowing users to take advantage of the value of the information. Because technology and information handling needs and requirements vary between different users or applications, information handling systems may also vary regarding what information is handled, how the information is handled, how much information is processed, stored, or communicated, and how quickly and efficiently the information may be processed, stored, or communicated. The variations in information handling systems allow for information handling systems to be general or configured for a specific user or specific use such as financial transaction processing, airline reservations, enterprise data storage, or global communications. In addition, information handling systems may include a variety of hardware and software components that may be configured to process, store, and communicate information and may include one or more computer systems, data storage systems, and networking systems.
Information handling systems help enterprises improve productivity by allowing enterprise employees to do more with fewer resources. For example, enterprises attempt to improve the productivity of salespersons by identifying contacts for sales calls that result in more sales per marketing campaign or initiative, where a contact or a lead can be defined as a qualified lead that is ready to be delivered to a sales force to pursue sales revenue. Two problems that often arise with attempts to identify and qualify contacts for salespersons to engage are that the enterprise's sales force is understaffed relative to the number of generated leads and relative to the amount of pre-sales activity that occurs to vet and qualify a contact, and that the sales force lacks confidence in the credibility of the contacts as qualified leads, especially compared with existing customers that a sales person already knows to contact. In some instances, a line of business (LOB) having a product or product group to market and sell will have goals that differ from the goals of the sales force. For example, a marketing team might desire to find and nurture new customers and potential customers from a demographic with which the sales force is unfamiliar. In order to drive the sales force to target a desired demographic or other customer constraint, an enterprise must build credibility in the contacts given to the sales force through successful contact identification and qualification.
Often, a sales force is pulled in multiple directions to sell a variety of products with little in the way of guidance for priorities between different products and for different target customers. In some product markets, technologically complex products require specialized sales force knowledge in order to sell products to technologically savvy customers or to technologically uneducated customers who need white-glove treatment with regard to product explanation in order to close the sale. The job of the sales force is made more difficult as products periodically evolve or extend into a new customer base. Contacting and nurturing new customers to purchase expensive and complex products takes time and patience, often with the added expense to the sales person of lost sales to known customers for known products. As a result, a high demand is put on an enterprise sales force that complicates understaffing problems and the inability to drive multiple but necessary programs that are aimed at increasing sales.
Conventional sales techniques often involve a face-to-face meeting or webcast event by a marketing team to present a product or service followed by sales calls to all opt-in attendee contacts. However, sales force engagement to contacts based on a one-time marketing presentation typically results in sub-optimal contacts, thus reinforcing sales force bias against working in cooperation with marketing teams. Over the short term, sales efforts focused on developing and retaining existing accounts typically provides better results for a sales force than does development of new customers, however, development of new customers often is in the best interest of the enterprise as a whole. Collective action between marketing and sales teams tends to leverage database-driven marketing initiatives and provides better support for pre-sales activities than a sales team is generally able to do in a time-effective manner when working without marketing. Nurturing and qualifying potential customers for an enterprise by using concrete customer insights helps make sales and marketing activities more efficient and gives rise to new revenue streams through better cadence and credibility in the lead generation and qualification process. However, selecting, organizing, analyzing and presenting customer information in a manner that is readily understood by both marketing teams and sales teams presents a challenge.